In a typical hospital, nursing home, or other similar institution, doctors will visit their patients on a routine basis and prescribe various medications for each patient. In turn, each patient will likely be placed on a certain medication treatment plan that requires that he or she take one or more doses of various medications daily. Some medications may require that they be administered only at certain times of the day (e.g., after meals) and/or at intervals of one or more hours each day. In addition, patients may request certain medications on an elective basis for complaints, such as head or body aches. These requests are typically included with the doctor's medication request or prescription that he or she sends to a pharmacy of the hospital for filling.
Medication requests or prescriptions received by the pharmacy will likely be checked by a registered pharmacist and then entered into the pharmacy information system. These requests reflect not only orders that are added to a particular patient's treatment plan, but also changes in a patient's existing treatment plan. The pharmacy information system combines this information with the patient's existing medication schedule and develops a patient medication profile. Using the patient medication profile, a fill list can be created that lists all medications that must be distributed to all patients for a given time period (e.g., a day).
In some instances, this list is printed and used by a pharmacist or pharmacy technician to hand pick each of the drugs needed for each patient (in the form of unit doses) and place those drugs in corresponding patient-specific medication containers (e.g., drawers, boxes, bins or bags). A registered pharmacist then checks the accuracy of the patient order, and, assuming the order was accurate, the individual patient boxes are loaded into a large transport cart and delivered to a nursing unit.
Several drawbacks exist, however, to this method of medication retrieval and distribution. In particular, it is very time consuming and manpower intensive. As a result, systems were created for automating the process of retrieving unit dose medications and distributing them to patients according to their respective medication profiles. One example of such a system is the ROBOT-Rx® system, offered by McKesson Automation Inc. and described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,468,110, 5,593,267 and 5,880,443, and other examples are described in U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 11/382,605, filed May 10, 2006, 11/611,956, filed Dec. 18, 2006 and 11/755,207, filed May 30, 2007, the contents of which are hereby incorporated herein by reference.
The ROBOT-Rx® system, like other similar systems, is a stationary robotic system that automates the drug storing, dispensing, returning, restocking and crediting process by using barcode technology. In particular, single doses of medications are re-packaged, for example in a clear plastic bag, so that each package contains a barcode corresponding to the package contents. The barcode may include the name of the medication, quantity, weight, instructions for use and/or expiration date.
The packaged medications are then stored in a storage area, such as a storage rack having a frame and a plurality of rod supports on which each package can be hung in a manner that provides each with an X, Y coordinate. Using the X, Y coordinates, packages can then be selected by an automated picking means (e.g., a robotic arm capable of moving at least in three, mutually orthogonal directions designated X, Y and Z), for distribution to individual patients.
More specifically, in one instance, a pharmacist or technician may manually enter the identification of a specific medication he or she would like the automated system to retrieve, for example, as a patient's first dose, in an emergency situation. The automated system, and, in particular, a computer associated with the automated system, would then locate the desired medication (i.e., the X, Y and Z coordinates of the medication) and instruct the picking means to retrieve the medication at that location. In another instance, the fill list created based on each patient's medication profile may be communicated to the computer associated with the automated system, providing the automated system with a current list of all patients and their individual medication needs. The computer also maintains a database of all medications stored in the storage area along with their corresponding X, Y and Z coordinates.
Patient-specific containers (e.g., drawers or bins) displaying barcodes that include the corresponding patient's unique identification code are placed on a conveyer belt associated with the automated system. At one point on the belt, a barcode reader reads the barcode displayed on the patient-specific box or container and communicates the patient's identification to the computer. The computer will then retrieve the patient's medication needs from the fill list, and determine the corresponding coordinates for each medication by accessing the database.
The computer can then guide the picking means to select the desired unit dose medications and deposit them in the patient-specific boxes or containers. In particular, the picking means, which also includes a barcode reader, moves to the designated location of a particular medication, as instructed by the computer, scans the barcode displayed on the package containing the medication to identify the medication contained in the package, and provides the identity to the computer.
After the computer confirms that the correct unit dose medication is contained in the package, the picking means will remove the package from the storage area (e.g., using a vacuum generator to produce suction to pull the package off the rod, or other holding means, and hold the package until it can be deposited) and drop it into the patient-specific container.
The process is repeated until the patient's prescription has been filled (i.e., until the patient-specific medication container contains each dose of medication to be taken by the patient in the given time period or, in the instance where the unit dose retrieved the first dose for a new patient, until that first dose has been retrieved). The conveyor belt then moves the patient-specific container to a check station where an operator can use yet another barcode reader to scan the barcode label on the patient-specific container to retrieve and display the patient's prescription, as well as to scan the barcodes on each package in the container to verify that the medications are correct.
As described above, unit dose medications dispensed robotically may be packaged into bags, boxes or a variety of other over-wraps prior to being stored in the storage area. This repackaging effort is performed for several reasons. First, the size and shape of the raw packages vary greatly; therefore, without some commonality in product shape, robotic handling becomes extremely difficult. Second, while robotic systems typically rely on barcodes to identify the products throughout the process, the majority of products originating from various manufacturers do not contain barcodes of any kind or are inconsistent with respect to the information they provide. Accordingly, in these instances, over-wrapping the unit dose with a package containing a barcode may be accomplished for identification purposes.
More recently, efforts have been made to reduce any need for repackaging since, for example, repackaging adds material costs to the final product and requires both additional technician time to perform the packaging as well as additional pharmacist time to validate the content of the package against the description on the label. In addition, repacking by a hospital, or similar institution, shortens the expiration date of the repackaged item based on United States Pharmacopeia/National Formulary (USP/NF) repackaging standards. Moreover, since efforts are being made to ensure that all human drug products have a barcode on the smallest container or package distributed which, in many instances, is the unit dose medication, each unit dose on a unit dose blister card will have a barcode thereon. This includes all human prescription drug products and over-the-counter drugs that are dispensed pursuant to an order in the hospital. The barcode must contain, at a minimum, a National Drug Code (NDC) in a linear barcode, in the Uniform Code Council (UCC) or Health Industry Business Communications Council (HIBCC) format. Following the effective date of this mandate, assuming that the unit dose medications are the smallest container or package used, all unit dose medications will contain barcodes that can be used by robotic dispensing systems, thus eliminating the need to overwrap or repackage merely for identification purposes.
However, even though improvements may be achieved by enhancing the utility of an automated dispensing system in relation to eliminating repackaging or over-wrapping operations, such systems still require a fair amount of manual intervention to prepare the medications for automated dispensing. Additionally, there is no standard shape or configuration for unit dose blister cards, so automatic dispensing of unit doses was a challenge. This challenge was initially met by U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/382,605, filed May 10, 2006, which provided a robotic device capable of dispensing unit dose blisters automatically. However, even for an automatic or robotic dispensing system, there may be challenges encountered in relation to ensuring proper alignment of medication packages and/or the containers that facilitate handling of the medication packages. For example, if a medication package or container is not properly aligned, the machinery used for automatic handling and dispensing may not be able to function properly. Accordingly, it may be desirable to provide a mechanism by which to improve automatic operation of robotic dispensing equipment.